Chapter VII: Idealism

_Chastity._—The average mind defines chastity as abstinence; in this sense, lifelong chastity is, in most cases, a perversion. The dictionary defines it as “pure from all unlawful sexual intercourse.” This gives rise to the question as to what is unlawful. Charlotte Perkins Gilman has accurately defined chastity, “not abstinence, but selection.” In this sense, chastity is a virtue.

Most intelligent persons are willing to recognize that our moral standards are changing. They are changing now at a greater rate than they have for the last thousand years. Woman is responsible. It has taken that long and longer for her to acquire enough inner power to set on foot the forces that could liberate her from her world-wide subjection to man and his laws. Now the forces have been liberated, and the woman of the future will be a freer, finer and better rounded human being than the woman of the dark past was. She has acquired education, a share in the knowledge of the universe in which she lives. She has acquired a sounder body, more fit to bear strong children. She has acquired a strong, well-functioning mind, thereby giving a better heritage of mental aptitude to her offspring, and thereby making herself more fit as a mother to help them in their formative years. She has acquired at least a partial control over the essential purse-strings. She can no longer be bought and sold as a horse.

She has at last managed to toss aside the old double standard of morality. Now she can demand of her mate either complete monogamy for both, or her right to share in whatever laxity he demands.

_Sexual Morality, Present and Future._—The keynote of the new sexual morality is freedom on both sides. This means, first, freedom from financial considerations. Love is a deep-rooted instinct, whose fruition means years or a lifetime of happiness or unhappiness for the individuals concerned, and the creation, of the men and women of the future. None of these are purchasable commodities. A man cannot buy a woman’s love, nor a child of his own breeding to do him honor; neither can either sex sell these delights. But, in point of fact, this is just what is done in many cases today, and is what was the common procedure of fifty years ago. Under the dying regime, a woman had to marry for the best home and support she could get. There was no other way open to her to obtain these things. A man knew he could have the best of women for his wife, if he could pay the price of her support. If a man was poor, he must accept accordingly. Men bought women to live with and to mother their children; women traded their loveliness for comfort and ease. Neither could buy love, and neither ever found it, unless the man found it in his mistress. But even then, under this ancient order, a man’s mistress looked with fonder eyes upon his checkbook than upon his face. Why men chose this beastly course is more than inexplicable, but they did, and it was entirely of their own making.

Women have a different idea on the subject. They have felt the horror of the man-made way, and have struggled to end it. They have seen that the first step toward any equality was to gain economic equality, and they have wisely fought for that first. Now, they have just achieved it. Woman, as a class, has achieved financial equality with man. This leaves them free to set love, and love alone, as a standard of choice for a mate. The result cannot fail to be wholesomely uplifting to the entire race. Love is gradually coming to be experienced for love only, and not for money.

The next revolutionary step is the realization that marriages are not sponsored by a group of bodiless cherubs, sitting on some remote cloud in heaven, but are of the earth, earthy, and are consequently human relationships, of a contractural nature, which may be terminated like any other human relationship. Our whole method of mating is haphazard in the extreme; there is no provision for adequate knowledge of the proposed partner; there is no certainty that this woman or man, thrown in contact with that man or woman through proximity or unplanned causes, is a human organism so sensitive physically, mentally, and spiritually that it can co-operate helpfully with its mate. Men and women are doomed to make mistakes. We are all willing to admit these mistakes in any field other than the love field, and would hold a man a fool if he remained under business contract with a partner absolutely unfitted to associate with him in that particular enterprise. Yet, we expect persons who make mistakes in the matrimonial field to stick it out, regardless of the unfitness of either member of the agreement.

It remains for the new morality to propose a dignified way of terminating such errors. At the present time, the divorce laws hold in practice that the man and woman who realize their unfitness for each other, and determine to secure a divorce, are criminals, guilty of collusion; this at least is the law in many states and nations. Certain states hold that the “guilty party” in a divorce action may not remarry. One party to the action must be considered, legally at least, a social pariah before any termination of the marital vows will be allowed. This is more than absurd, it is brutal. Divorce laws in harmony with the new morality will permit a man and woman, who have erred in their love choice, to part as friends, rather than as enemies, and will leave no stigma of shame upon either of them, nor any restrictions as to their future actions.

The third, and most radical plan of the new morality, at least from the purist point of view, will allow for companionate matings. If a man or woman, having carefully considered what may be lost or gained by a wider type of love relationships, determines to risk the experiments without taking advantage of other women or men, this is an individual choice; and the new morality, in all matters, is giving the individual as much intelligent choice as it can, consonant with social safety. Such adventures are like laboratory experiments in eugenics for the good of the race; they may result in unhappiness, but the very discovery that unhappiness has resulted is a social fact which may aid future decisions. There will be no blame attached to the experiment if it fails, no insult visited upon the participators. If the reverse is true, and happiness results, this is also a social fact which may aid future decisions. In any event, it will be regarded as a legitimate experiment, attaching praise rather than blame on those who, in the full possession of their faculties, and after mature consideration, enter upon it.

The first question to arise, in connection with this idea, is that of the home and the children. Neither of these, in their present condition, are matters of unusual human glory. Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s extended studies of each are recommended for reading. They offer a new and intelligent slant upon our homes and our child-rearing. Motherhood is unquestionably a great benefit to society. It is of greater value to society than to the individual. Motherhood pensions and similar remedies are steps toward a social repayment of this benefit. These matters are all experimental. It is not suggested that any young couple start to put them into immediate practice. The important thing is to realize their imminence, and to regard them with something of a scientific detachment, rather than with a bitter bias and prejudice. All of these absurd prejudices are alien to human instincts, and are based upon Moses’ translation of thundering over a mountain top. We are tending toward efficiency in all human concerns upon the industrial field; let us tend also upon the extension of efficiency to matters concerning the home.

Woman’s work in the home will not always remain the low domestic thing that it is. Scientific information and the aid of experts are invaluable in home management and child-rearing, no less than in the rotation of crops and the development of fatter hogs and slimmer dahlia stems. Child rearing will some day be included in matters where efficiency and modern methods will prevail. This may very well involve some form of institutional raising. If such is the case, it will be wise to understand in advance that this will date from a period when our culture is determined by human beings more than by money; and that the institutions of the future will be administered by those who today make a success of their individual establishments, rather than by those who today make a failure of the institutions entrusted to their care. Against this theory, most persons advance the objection that the majority of present day institutions are failures. This does not necessarily imply that those of the future, once wisely conceived, and adequately run, will be failures. There was a time when any man could start a small furnace and manufacture steel, if he wished to. Each small manufacturer competed with another equally small. Some produced good material, others poor. Would anyone suggest that the U. S. Steel Company be returned to that condition? So will people of the future, when enlightenment has come to them, realize the advantages accruing from specialized rearing of children by competent persons, over the present haphazard system.

There are comparatively few women who are fitted for maternity. It requires more than love. It requires tact, patience, infinite interest in the small minds. Not one woman in one hundred is so equipped. Nor, would fifty percent of the women of today choose maternity, if they thought they could reject it honorably. Women become mothers, in at least fifty percent of the cases, first because they do not know how to avoid it, second because they believed it a social obligation. Many mothers never learn to love their children, consequently, their care of them is a drudgery that is ruinous to parent and child alike.

In this one matter of the home, woman is remaining backward. She has accepted all other advances, but she will not learn to systematize her home. She hoots at all scientific advice. There have been institutions working for years to lighten woman’s labor in the home, and not one woman in a thousand has accepted their findings. Most women sacrifice their lives to household drudgery, toiling daily over scrub board, mop, and stove, despite the fact that even now, all of this work can be cut in half by a small amount of systematizing, and the use of scientific appliances. The day will come, however, when woman will be converted to these things, and then her life will be freer for other enjoyment.

_The Purity Ideal._—Nine out of ten of the women who accept the ideal of virginity as that of purity have no idea where this delusion originated. The theory of woman’s innocence and purity was launched during the days of chivalry. Even modern women have a soft spot in their hearts for chivalry. What was it? Was it the high and noble Galahad belief that women were superior spiritual beings, far above the touch of mere man? If so, man’s actions have never proved it. It was not. In a few words, men put women on a so-called pedestal, not to worship her, but to keep her from seeing what they were doing. They told her the world was a low place, and they would shield her from it, and women, blinded by flattery, fell for the hoax. Men have never really reverenced women. A few have reverenced one woman, mother, wife or sister. But the fundamental reason for their so doing was not to do honor to her, but to keep her ignorant of what they were doing. Men realized, either consciously or unconsciously, that they could rule the world only so long as women were ignorant of its customs and habits. An ignorant foe is no foe. Therefore, so long as women were kept in ignorance, they could not threaten man’s supremacy.

Face this fact, all women. Stop yielding to the silly, hypocritical sham of chivalry, and your progress in man’s world will be made in rapid, shining strides.